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Euglena gracilis is a freshwater species of single-celled alga in the genus Euglena. It has secondary chloroplasts , and is a mixotroph able to feed by photosynthesis or phagocytosis . It has a highly flexible cell surface, allowing it to change shape from a thin cell up to 100 μm long to a sphere of approximately 20 μm.
Euglena is a genus of single cell flagellate eukaryotes. It is the best known and most widely studied member of the class Euglenoidea, a diverse group containing some 54 genera and at least 200 species. [1] [2] Species of Euglena are found in fresh water and salt water.
Euglena sanguinea is a species of the genus Euglena.The red colour is due to the presence of astaxanthin and the cells can be populous enough to colour water red. The pigment is used to protect the chloroplasts from light that is too intense, but as the light levels change the cells can take on a green colour as the red pigment is moved to the centre of the cells.
Euglenoids are distinguished mainly by the presence of a type of cell covering called a pellicle. Within its taxon, the pellicle is one of the euglenoids' most diverse morphological features. [ 7 ] The pellicle is composed of proteinaceous strips underneath the cell membrane, supported by dorsal and ventral microtubules .
In particular, members of Spirocuta share a synapomorphy, or unique trait: their high number of strips (between 16 and 56) confers the cells with an immense flexibility, allowing them to actively stretch and deform. [1] This process is known as metaboly or euglenid motion. [6] [3] Euglena, moving by metaboly and swimming
Euglenales consists mostly of freshwater organisms, in contrast to its sister Eutreptiales which is generally marine. Cells have two flagella, but only one is emergent; the other is very short and does not emerge from the cell, so cells appear to have only one flagellum. [3]
Paramylon is made in the pyrenoids of Euglena. [1] The euglenoids have chlorophylls a and b and they store their photosynthate in an unusual form called paramylon starch, a β-1,3 polymer of glucose. The paramylon is stored in rod like bodies throughout the cytoplasm, called paramylon bodies, which are often visible as colorless or white ...
Its embryos have been found to have symbiotic algae living inside them, [7] the only known example of vertebrate cells hosting an endosymbiont microbe (unless mitochondria is considered). [ 8 ] [ 9 ] Zoochlorella is a nomen rejiciendum for a genus of green algae assigned to Chlorella . [ 10 ]